The recent Empirical Cycling podcast covered this. In brief, if you need really high TTE you can keep pushing it out. However, many people will also run into time limitations. So you increase the %FTP (get closer to FTP) and start a new TTE progression. But also, you eventually need to do some VO2max training (if you aren’t already sprinkling that in). The longer it’s been since you did VO2max, the more FTP gains you’re missing out on. How you decide to trade off maxing your TTE vs VO2max is discipline / event specific.
But the full thing is really worth a listen. Sometimes the podcasts can be extremely technical (biology wise) and/or get too far on tangents and become hard to follow. This has to be my favorite episode so far and much easier to follow because there’s no medical stuff.
I could probably do it but I wouldn’t want to. Breaking it up into 20 or 30 minute intervals with a few minutes of rest is way easier mentally.
Cue the comments about hardening up and all that but I’ve ridden and raced for 40 years and I’ve never encountered 90 minutes steady state out on the road. 90 minutes steady state is an indoor trainer idea. Get your special trainer badge if you like.
Thanks, I’ll give that a listen on my road trip in a few weeks.
I started adding vo2 as I feel it’s a limiter to my growth right now. I’m working a progression on vo2 and adding sweet spot progression also. I was going to try threshold progression at same time, but I am not able to put quality work in on all 3 in the same week so making a change to just vo2 and sweet spot
I might just be an outlier coming from a 10 year power background, but I’m not convinced it could ever be possible to achieve something like 1x120 or 2x90 @ 90% simply because it would not be possible to stop my FTP from having risen during that training block. My power curve just is not shaped in a way such that a drastic increase in 2 hour power or similar would NOT produce +FTP, whether I want it to or not. Maybe my physiology will feel like it reacts differently when I’m at a 350w FTP instead, but otherwise I similarly can’t fathom how those percentages pan out for myself
Personal example, I did just the other day hit 1x90 @ what was 90% when this training block started. Which means I know for sure it is no longer 90%, haha. I would like to push to 1x120 at these watts, which is realistic and will feel awesome to PR my 2 hour power. But, it just isn’t 90% anymore, I already know that
(This could also just partially be a fact that I’m not as close to my potential as other folks are in these discussions, where my FTP has not become almost-impossible to raise, like it is for the super advanced endurance athletes)
I normally try to do these outside and go for 90gs an hour. I would do the same inside but with a lot more mental motivation and maybe while watching a race of anything for the most part.
Last month, in the final week of my SST Progression, I did a 3x35 @91% and a 1x115 @91%. I could definitely have stretched out the latter to 1x120 @90% and quite possibly 1x135, but got fed up of pedalling. 115mins was my target, and I’d mentally had enough by then, but not physically. NB no FTP bump from this block according to TR’s AIFTP, nor was I expecting one.
Before I began doing this type of work ~15 months ago, I was poor at this type of sustained muscular endurance work; the terrain where I lived was unsuited to it, and I’d not attempted it indoors. But I soon adapted to it once I began, and reckon most people would similarly. It’s become by far my favourite type of work on the turbo - a mainstay - and feels quite a lot easier to do in practice than I expected.
However, I’m not convinced that pushing out much beyond 90mins @90% is worth it (for me at least) - probably better switching to something else around that point.
Others already answered a little bit. For my Cat 3/4 roadies, we usually go VO2max. For my ultra MTB types, we go to 2hrs+, or we do VO2max and then revisit the TTE work again later in race-prep.
Really just depends on the individual and what they’re training for.
